


Europa Falls

by jazzfic



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: F/M, Saturnalia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penny wins a contest to stay at the strangest hotel imaginable. In place of Swedish actors and Star Wars characters, she takes Sheldon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Europa Falls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [courtney_beth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/courtney_beth/gifts).



> Saturnalia gift for [courtney_beth](http://archiveofourown.org/users/courtney_beth/pseuds/courtney_beth). The prompt was [THIS](http://www.icehotel.se/uk/ICEHOTEL/)! Thanks to [allthingsholy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/allthingsholy/pseuds/allthingsholy) for the beta.

  


_The guy behind the newsstand has orange tips in his hair. He watches her for a moment before speaking. “Ah, the northern lights. Cool, no?”_

 _Penny, gazing at the postcards, shrugs as she takes one off the rack and puts it on the counter._

 _“Sorry, couldn’t say.” She grabs a bottle of water from the small cooler and hands over a 20 kronor note. Probably shouldn’t be breaking up the bills before dumping her cash at the exchange, but she really doesn’t care right now. “Didn’t get to see them, in the end. I’ll have a stamp, too, thanks...”_

 _He’s cute, fair and tall in that icy-cool Scandinavian way. And still trying to catch her eye. She makes a point of ignoring him. Another time, she might smile back, say her name, comment on his choice of hair coloring, get a little of that gentle sing-song voice between her ears while she’s still got two feet in this strange corner of the world. But now they’re calling her flight, a blur in Swedish followed by an English translation that’s equally mangled. Someone bumps her from behind._

 _She holds a hand out for her change, but he hesitates. “You do not want airmail?”_

 _No. What she wants is a pen. There’s a sharpie somewhere in her purse, but it’s half-dried and useless. She blinks and for a moment she sees a pair of hunched shoulders, red dinosaur t-shirt beneath a ludicrously oversized down jacket. His hands moving across a notebook, those small and fussy block letters that he seems to be able to produce like some sort of human typewriter. And his voice, quiet and insistent._ Move, Penny, you’re blocking my light...

 _“What?” She stares back as the announcement is repeated. British Airways 771 to London, Heathrow. Would all passengers please make their way to International Departures, gate 9._

 _Orange Tips nods at her postcard._

 _“No—” Penny says. She can feel the frustration building. “I’m not sending it overseas...I mean. No. He’s not coming.”_

 _Now everyone in the shop is looking at her. This was a bad idea. Should have just walked in and walked out again._

 _“Excuse me, have you today’s Telegraph, please?” The woman who’d bumped into her before pushes past and stares the Swede down. White-haired and small and carrying a Harrods bag full of wine bottles. He tosses his head with boredom at the stand of newspapers, and Penny leaves._

 _There’s a ballpoint in one of the payphone booths. She ducks inside, ignoring the commotion around her, the rush in her lungs. A second’s hesitation, and she’s flipping the postcard over, writing quickly:_ Here’s your aurora, Sheldon. Make sure you find a real one this time, okay?

 _She doesn’t send it. She leaves the northern lights and her own damn wishes there, at the airport._

 

 

 

The aurora borealis is greener, bluer, swifter, more startling and silent than almost anything imaginable. Like so many things.

But to know this, you have to see it first.

 

 

 

“So. You’re not from around here, huh?”

There’s not a whole lot of science to waitressing. Smile, keep tabs on who asked for extra onion or the dairy-free option, or how likely it is that Dad on his one night out with the family will turn up the sleaze the minute Mom has the four-year-old occupied with a straw and apple stained napkin. They’re so predictable. Never mind that she’s got exactly twelve minutes left until Stacy starts and Penny can limp home and either drown herself in cheap wine or fall asleep in front of _Conan_. Both, probably.

But this one’s different. He’s polite, for a start. And there’s that accent.

“Nope.” He smiles, eyes crinkling at the edges.

Penny taps her pen, enjoying the excuse to stop and think. “Hmm, let me guess...” She picks a country at random. “Iceland!”

“Ah. Atlantic City, actually. Here in California for business. But by way of Stockholm, circa, oh 1983, so you were kind of close.”

“No kidding.” She flips her notebook shut, and smiles back. “You don’t have to be so nice, though. I wasn’t close at all. Okay, I’m going to stop talking now and get your iced tea.”

As it happens Stacy’s in early, and she catches Penny by the kitchen. “Oh, Pen, I’ll take him if you want to run. The traffic is brutal.”

Penny laughs. “I got it. Hey, Stockholm’s in Sweden, right?”

“What? Yeah, I think so. Why are you asking me? Doesn’t that friend of yours with the geek t-shirts who looks like a beanpole always talk about having an appointment to keep in Stockholm? I remember distinctly ‘cause of that time I made the mistake of asking why he was keeping a day planner for the next decade.” She shudders at the memory. “He damn near burned a hole in my apron with those pretty blue eyes as if I’d spoke the voice of the Devil. Sorry, I know you love those boys, hon, but it’ll be a while before I take that table again.”

He has a laptop out when Penny returns. She puts down the tall glass and hands over a menu, which he waves away gently.

“I’ll save you your spiel...the soup of the day’s fine.”

“Coming right up.” Penny tucks the menu away. “And thanks. I’ve been talking about the lasagne and three bean salad for so long now I feel like I’m campaigning for its re-election or something.”

He laughs. “And do you think you’ve got the numbers?”

“Well, the Ranch Burger’s pretty much killing us in the polls. Yeah, can’t beat mass popularity. But we’re sampling well with the over 60s, so.”

The story fades a little when her eyes fall on the screen of his browser. Blue ice and fairytale lights. Somewhere winter, and crisp, and beautiful. “Ugh, that looks like heaven...what is it?”

“ _That_ is the upside to having business trips sponsored by Halebop,” he says, at her blank look, adding, “the Swedish phone conglomerate, I mean, not the comet.”

Sheldon would love this conversation, she thinks. And manipulate the hell out of it. “Meaning you get to stay in a hotel. Made of ice. Right, that’s it.” Penny jabs a finger at the screen. “Job swap for a year, please. I have to see this to believe it.”

He laughs, again politely, again charmingly, and she almost laughs back, but she can feel the manager’s eyes on her so she checks herself. She couldn’t have even if she’d wanted to anyway, because right then the pair of third graders at table eight combine all their available malevolent forces to tip over a pitcher of raspberry soda. No real surprise, since they appear to be under the apparent sole supervision of one emotionless looking seventeen-year-old with a smart phone and permanent scowl. She might be amused at her powers of foresight if it weren’t so boringly predictable. Penny sighs and makes an automatic beeline for the busboy trolley, napkin in hand, ready to disarm the sticky-fingered enemy like the good waitress that she is. Hotels made of ice, she decides, whether they exist or not, will have to wait.

 

 

 

As it turns out, she may have in fact dreamt up the polite man from Stockholm slash Atlantic City, because he never shows up again. But the hotel made of ice is very, very real.

“Oh, you mean—” and Penny doesn’t hear the rest of this sentence because the remaining words that come out of Sheldon’s mouth sound like a dog barking underwater. “...In Sweden,” he finishes, unhelpfully. He stares at her, hands on his knees.

She doesn’t even try. “Leonard?”

Leonard peers at them over the top of his glasses, barely concealing a sigh. “Here.” He flips his laptop around on the table. It’s the same website from before. Penny waves a hand.

“Yep, yep, seen it already. Happy to report that Vampire Eric’s much hotter dad has already given me the grand tour. Well, kind of...”

She chews on her lip thoughtfully, but when she looks up they’re both staring open mouthed at her like she’s sprouted a new head.

“Stellan Skarsgard was at the Cheesecake Factory?” squeaks Leonard.

“What? No—”

“Penny.” Sheldon’s eyes look about ready to engulf the room and everything in it. “Are you telling me that Cerdic from _King Arthur_ and Dr. Selvig from _The_ -according-to-IMDB-still-filming- _Avengers_ has sat one mere metaphorical place from where I’m sitting right now?”

He’s bouncing in his spot. Actually bouncing.

“Oookay.” Time to call in her best runaway heifer voice. “Just back up a moment here. Let’s take a big breath and start again.” Sheldon opens his mouth but she cuts him off, quickly. “I know the Icehotel exists. I’ve been pouring over that damn website all last night, and look, I don’t have a clue who Cerdic is and I know you’re on IMDB’s banned commenters list, _Sheldon_...but that’s got nothing to do with why I need your brain power.”

Leonard picks up his water bottle. “With what?” he asks, a touch suspiciously.

Time to put this plan into action. Penny takes hold of the laptop. She taps a few keys and turns it back so they can all see.

“Getting me there.” She grins widely. “In fifty words or less.”

 

 

 

He doesn’t offer to help; he sort of falls into it, by default, bad luck, having lost a particularly fierce game of rock-paper-scissors-whoever-or-whatever-the-last. She suspects Leonard of turning on some geek power guilt trip involving Sheldon’s rules being twisted around and destroying their maker. Or maybe there actually _is_ a help-thy-neighbor clause in that thicker than September Vogue roommate agreement. Help Penny with her task of the week, hey, it’s not like she wants to build atoms from skyscrapers. It’ll be like cutting a coupon from a magazine, or some other waste of time that exists in his over-inflated view of everything not revolving adoringly around the great sphere of knowledge that is Sheldon’s brain.

Besides, he owes her favors. Favors she never calls him on. It’s like that time she wandered into the laundry room and found him bent over, scrawny limbs spread-eagled like a human spider, trying to reach down the gap in between the washers. He’d lost a quarter, or something else weirdly endearing, as if this were the 1930s and Sheldon one hot chestnut from a street urchin with a pageboy cap and bag of newspapers. But it was if that coin was suddenly the most important single object in the universe, and no matter how purposely sloppily she folded her socks, she couldn’t be a helpful distraction and keep his eyes from wandering to a hopeless gap he couldn’t reach. So Penny had sighed and scooted down to her stomach, gagging on a dustbunny, trying not to think of the grime on the floor being transferred to her favorite and most washed out t-shirt. She’d reached a hand in and found the precious coin first go; and the look on his face, it almost astonished her, made her want to nearly—well. He’d hugged her twice in five and a bit years. The return of George Washington didn’t seem quite like an even enough score.

So Penny flipped the quarter with a jovial wink, laughing when he’d caught it on the third fumble. And she’d said, “You owe me for that, Sheldon.”

Small favors. Trivial things. But they matter.

“Why do you want to enclose yourself in a frozen capsule?” he wonders, now. They’re alone in her apartment. Apparently Sheldon had needed cooking wine, and knew by way of the village (meaning Amy) that Penny kept a stockpile and never, ever cooked with it. “Penny, you walk around in next to nothing. How will you sleep in temperatures below zero?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t care. That’s the fun part. That’s the adventure. And I can’t believe I have to explain this to you, of all people. How was the Arctic, by the way?”

He shudders. “Painful. Betrayal cuts deep and never heals.”

She could go one of several ways with this, but chooses the one she knows will work.

“Where does Superman go when he needs to think, Sheldon?” she asks, gently.

This makes him sit up. “Penny, I hardly think you can compare the great Fortress of Solitude to an ultra-trendy, dreamt up by Gen Xers hotel made of ice and quite possibly frozen vodka, too, if that bar is anything to go by.” Sheldon takes hold of her laptop and starts typing. “However this isn’t something we can manipulate, there’s no random draw. This is a competition based on words, words that presumably are going to be read by unbiased eyes and given some sort of judgement. This isn’t a year’s supply of Mountain Dew we’re talking about. You’re just going to have to drag the creative thought that’s been allocated to this week’s footwear consumption and that etsy store I know you like to spring clean once in a while, and give them a winning answer.”

She looks at him. His hands don’t leave the keyboard; she has to prise the laptop back. It’s as bad as handing back a coin he wanted to save himself. He doesn’t know how to accept it.

“Okay, then.”

Sheldon blinks. “Okay?”

Penny waves a hand towards the door. “Yep. I can take it from here. All I needed was a little pep talk from someone who knows everything except how to explain anything. Now take that bottle and go...bake something.”

He’s halfway out when she gestures him back, unscrews the cap and takes a gulp. The expression on his face is worth every horrible drop.

 

 

 

The Swedish tourist board are going to love her forever, she thinks, later, when it’s something like four in the morning, when she has another shift to get to in a few hours, and can do nothing but lie in bed with eyes open and fingers splayed across the comforter. Well, as much love as can be made in a few dozen fractured sentences about wanting to experience something new because she’s a damn good waitress and (maybe) an even better actress; how she’s never travelled except to run away from things; and anyway, that’s not travel, that’s guilt.

She adores the sun, really she does, but right now she could very easily plunge into a bath of ice, sleep for a decade, and be happy.

 

 

 

Penny wins. That’s the first surprise.

The second is when she offers her other ticket to Sheldon.

When Bernadette asks, no demands, to know why, Penny responds with the first thing that comes into her head.

“Because he went off in a huff and baked almond spice cookies, even after I’d drunk from the bottle of Regina and you know, contaminated everything. And he shaped them into flying saucers. And because I can’t return a small favor with another small favor, it has to be all sorts of freaking huge, and, God, _okay_ , I don’t know why. Stop staring at me like that.”

Bernadette dumps a packet of straws at a glass on the bar, missing the lot. Across the room, the guy playing the keyboard finishes the last notes of _You’ve Got a Friend In Me_ , and three people clap.

“Oh,” she says. “Well, congratulations! It sounds like you’ll have an amazing time.”

Penny stares down at her nails. “I think it might be next year before Leonard believes that I haven’t been replaced by a pod.”

“You know, Howard has a funny little saying—” Bernadette’s voice turns wistful, and Penny has a feeling the original reason for this conversation might now be forgotten, which, is maybe good. “Being alone with Sheldon is like watching paint dry and getting high off the fumes.”

It’s almost closing up time, so Penny requests a honky tonk version of _Single Ladies_ to accompany the stacking of the chairs, just for the hell of it, but mostly to drown out Bernadette, who has moved on from Howard’s funny little sayings to Howard’s funny little exploits in the bedroom. But the keyboardist doesn’t know it.

 

 

 

Sheldon, who happens to possess a selection of extreme weather clothing that would be more than adequate for a trip to the surface of Mars, packs one suitcase to Penny’s three, and almost has a minor meltdown when he gets an eyeful of the contents.

Seriously, can she not trust Amy to keep _any_ secrets?

“This isn’t _Star Wars_ ,” Penny sighs, as she leans against the trunk of Leonard’s car and tries to squash her makeup bag into a shape that will allow her one pair of hiking boots to fit. “We’re not on a mission to defend the ice planet Moth. Be grateful that I let you take that emergency expandable tent in the first place.”

“It’s Hoth.”

She can feel him hovering by her shoulder. He’s wearing twelve layers of fleece and goose down.

“What?”

“Hoth. The ice planet in _The Empire Strikes Back_. A _moth_ is a member of the order of insects known as lepidopterans, a species that has undoubtedly flourished since the Jurassic period, but as far as I believe has not yet had the distinction of providing terra firma to the Rebel Alliance.”

He really could talk his way through a concrete bunker. She sighs. “Hoth, Moth, whatever. And what is with that outfit? It’s like ninety degrees in the shade.”

“One should always wear their bulkiest items of clothing when flying. It is a prudent and practical measure to save space at forty thousand feet.”

“Okay, well if ‘one’ turns around and find you passed out at the check-in counter, ‘one’ will be forced to haul your whiny ass over to those mean old security guys with the metal detectors and maybe just leave you there!”

Penny slams the trunk and leaps into the front passenger seat. That look can just stew on his face for a while.

When she’s calmed down a bit and glances into the wing mirror, she can see Leonard murmuring something to Sheldon outside the car. Sheldon has that angle of slumped defeat to his shoulders that means he’s going to comply, unhappily, and with extreme put-upon disinterest. Well, let him sulk all the way. That’s fine by Penny. It’s champagne and business-class seats for the next ten hours, and you can be goddamn sure she’s going to make the most of it.

 

 

 

“What did Leonard say to you?”

“Where’s SyFy on this?”

“You have to pay for it. Give the nice machine the Mastercard and then you can have all the reruns of shows you’ve already seen to your heart’s content. Sheldon, I asked you a question.”

“I don’t know why you feel the need to discredit the deep parallels we’re seeing here with Han and Leia’s escapades, anyway...” She glares, and he sighs under his breath. “He said this is your trip.”

“That’s very true.”

“And that I have to respect that.”

“Also very true.”

Sheldon stops pressing buttons at random on the screen and looks at her. “This isn’t Switzerland,” he says.

It’s hard to figure out that expression on his face. Or what the hell he could possibly mean by that statement. There’s a shudder of turbulence; his knuckles are pale and she can see one heel of his brand new Danners tapping up and down, up and down. So scared and desperate to hide it that he didn’t ask to swap his window seat for the one nearest the exit, even though she could see the question on his lips as they’d had their boarding passes printed and bags tagged.

Penny turns back to her magazine. She peels at a perfume sample and sniffs the paper. Woody notes, birch trees, snow. Except snow doesn’t have a particular smell, unless it’s the scent of Alexander Skarsgard dressed as some James Bond fantasy, gazing enigmatically from behind killer aviators. _Well, how about that,_ she thinks, smiling down at the page, _barely left the ground and already we’ve come full circle._

“There’s Doctor Who on one of the free channels,” she says, after a moment.

Sheldon pulls on his earphones. And she watches him tap that heel away, unconsciously, as the Daleks corner Rose on some dark, disused world, until he falls asleep.

 

 

 

 _The day she returns there’s a union strike, meaning an unscheduled stopover at Kennedy. She stands on the balcony of her hotel room and tries his cell. It goes to voicemail. No surprise there._

 _Next call. Leonard answers on the third ring. They run through pleasantries of a sort, and then he says, “Hey, so I got this cryptic email from Sheldon. Something about putting in one less order for Thai food for the foreseeable future? What’s going on?”_

 _Penny shades her eyes against the sun. She’s got a view of concrete and AT &T signs, the haze of dirt and people and a city she doesn’t know. And even though it’s cold she can’t seem to feel it; her sleeves are pushed up past her elbows, and in the long evening shadows the light makes everything glow._

 _She almost says, well, what happened was I kissed him, that roommate of yours, and he ran away scared, came back again, and now he’s gone looking for a fucking proof in the sky and don’t ask me what it is because I don’t know._

 _Almost. But._

 _She’s pretty sure Leonard knows anyway._

 

 

 

They have a connecting flight to Kiruna, and because small delays always, always add up to big delays, and because _some people_ find it necessary to argue points of fact with everyone, including (but not restricted to) air stewardesses, quarantine officers, and one very tolerant British policeman at Heathrow, she finds herself now in the bizarre situation of literally dragging one of the most brilliant minds on the planet by his neon blue sleeve through the transit lounges of Arlanda Airport, barely registering the fact that this is Sweden, _Sweden_ , and all Penny can think is how she’s going to need a holiday in like, Fiji or somewhere, just to recover from this one. Which has barely started.

“Penny,” Sheldon manages to puff. “This is most undignified.”

“Welcome to Sweden,” she says, brightly. She grins at his flushed cheeks as they pass a life-sized sleigh and reindeer. “So. Who’s feeling the layers, now?”

His messenger bag, filled to capacity with papers and gadgets he apparently couldn’t exist without on the plane, swings and knocks against his side. And even though she’s technically the one with the agenda and actual, you know, time management skills, it’s Sheldon’s long strides that soon overlap hers, and when they reach the gate he’s the one leading.

They’re the last to arrive. The girl who smiles them through is quite incredibly beautiful, her voice soft and clear as she welcomes them on board. _Hej och välkommen_ , she says, and Sheldon immediately mumbles something in return; but he’s still breathing hard from the mad gallop, so can hardly speak, and he almost falls with relief into his seat. Which turns out to be a blessing in disguise, because this is a much smaller plane, and seeing as she’s already sat through all the variations of what could possibly go wrong in a pressurised environment above a white and ghostly wilderness, Penny would much rather an exhausted Sheldon than a panicking one.

She looks out of the tiny window, to the sky. Washed out, clouded, already fading. If it were possible to grab hold of the sun and keep it for as long as possible, she would.

 

 

 

They’re stuck with a taxi for the last short leg, and a driver with minimal conversational skills. Probably a good thing, she decides, pulling the collar of her jacket so it’s tight beneath her chin. She’s been trying to keep her eyes open for about half an hour now, and not having a whole lot of luck.

Eight miles. And then they’re at Jukkasjärvi.

It’s dark, late, and they roll out and slam the doors shut, mostly without bearing, mostly hungry. Tiredness has gone the way of distance; this might as well be her grandparents place out in the Nebraska nothing, for all that it’s dark and silent. She can make out the block edges of buildings and cone shaped trees. She can taste her own breath.

“Oh, nothing to worry,” says the clerk, when they get inside. He taps in their details. “There is a cold front approaching but we’re very sheltered, and it will just mean a whiter day for you. So. Ah, this is very exciting. We have you in one of the ice suites just for tonight, and then to the hotel proper for the remainder of your stay. Any longer we find is a little too much for our guests. They need a break from the cold, you see?”

Penny nods. To be honest she’s only half listening. Any other hotel, and she would make an effort to pay attention to the mundane details such as names and locked box passkeys and check out times and may-we-have-your-zip-code-for-our-database, madam, really, she would; but here, all she can take in is the ice.

The clerk finishes tapping and looks up with a smile. “Now, the manager knows you’re here. Guests always get a guided tour, but I believe it is his wish to show you personally...” His gaze drifts somewhere behind her. “Sir? Are you okay?”

Penny turns just in time to see Sheldon’s eyes snap open. “The proof is missing completely,” he murmurs, “Fermat left nothing...what? Oh.” He rubs a hand over his face and blinks at his watch. “I can’t read these numbers. I can’t read these—Penny, I’m falling asleep like an ungulate mammal.”

 _For crying out loud_. She shrugs at the clerk’s expression, and is about to manhandle Sheldon into a sitting position before he manages to power nap again when she hears the sound of a champagne cork popping and the crystal chime of glasses. The reception is flooded with a small crowd of people, all looking like they’ve stepped from the pages of a North Face catalog, and suddenly there’s a whole lot of smiling faces and congratulations being made. It’s kind of overwhelming. They do realize that she’s just another visitor, right? Okay, one who’s maybe not paying a kronor aside from whatever she manages to ring up at the bar here. (And considering that she brought along Sheldon Cooper and voluntarily at that, there’s a fairly good chance of that bill being all sorts of generous.) But a visitor, all the same.

“We loved your entry,” the manager gushes, as Penny smiles and nods into her champagne flute. “So eloquent. So succinct.”

Sheldon, back among the living again, perks up at this and gazes at her curiously.

“Yes, Penny, what _did_ you say? I don’t believe you told anyone.”

An awkward silence descends and she smacks her lips together, tasting the alcohol.

“Later, Sheldon.”

“But—”

“Later,” she hisses.

He clamps his mouth shut, and, eyeballing each other like two wary cats on a ledge, they follow the manager out.

 

 

 

And still the day keeps going. Forget trying to keep Sheldon awake, she’s going to be out of it herself soon enough.

This guy sure can talk. Mostly about how spectacular everything is, and okay, fair enough, she can’t disagree. It’s extraordinary beautiful. And she’ll be all over appreciating it. In the morning.

He takes them to the locker areas where they’re to store their luggage. Apparently if they just lug it into the rooms they’ll simply end up with frozen fake Gucci. Making it harder to brush off and re-sell on eBay, Penny jokes, but the manager doesn’t laugh. And when Sheldon starts translating this into Swedish she has to shut him up with a glare and then they’re locked in another stare-off, which lasts all of eight seconds but unfortunately does nothing to dampen the running commentary.

“Oh, wow, it that the time?” Penny asks, dropping a yawn that’s about as unsubtle as a freight train.

The hint doesn’t take. Now he’s rattling off a list of facts regarding the make-up of the ice, how the structure and precise measurements of this Disney wonderland ensure that the temperature never strays below minus eight centigrade, so on, so on. Penny makes noises of agreement, her eyes straying intermittently to Sheldon just to make sure he’s staying civilized. She can see his eyes scanning every which way to all corners of the room; he taps a finger against his jacket, lips moving silently as if performing an inventory of his own. She makes a mental note to get him to recite everything back in the early hours of the morning if she’s suddenly wide awake and having a strong internal argument with her body clock.

And now the room is silent and there are two sets of eyes on her. Great.

Penny scrambles to recall what was last said, gives up, and smiles brightly. “Okay! Well, thank you so much for the welcome. Again.”

“Yes, absolutely. Now here are the keys. You already have sheets and sleeping bags, so all that is left is for you to change here and make your way to your suite. The bathrooms, sauna and showers are back this way.” He half smiles. “We do not recommend too much to drink before sleep as it is a cold trip in the middle of the night.”

“Well, Sheldon, this should be easy for you,” Penny says, when the manager has finally gone and she has the happy task of having to fit her bags in yet another impossibly tiny space. Maybe these things are like the TARDIS, and enormous on the inside. “Since you invented the bathroom break rulebook and all.”

“Yes, but I never got around to translating it into the Nordic languages.”

Was that a joke? Or the Sheldon equivalent? She studies the back of his head as he bends over his suitcase. But before she can say anything he’s standing up and holding out something in her direction. “These are for you.”

She stares, hard. “Um. What?”

“EKG leads. I didn’t haul this cardiac monitor across nine time zones just for ballast, Penny.” He sighs at her blank expression. “I mean, it would be pointless to take only _one_ set of measurements, now, wouldn’t it?”

Penny blinks several times, and counts, very slowly, to ten. “No. I am not adding to your guineapig data. End of discussion.”

He’s silent for a moment, then shrugs and palms the wires. She can hear his drawl in his voice when he says, more to himself, “Well, that’s a damn shame...”

Oh, she’s too tired for this. “You’ll get over it,” is all Penny says.

It turns out that she has the women’s bathroom to herself, so she promptly wastes no time in steaming up the place in preparation for a night in the freezer. It sounds blandly like a punishment when put like that, and she’s had more than a few ex boyfriends who she would not have batted an eyelid to send down that particular path. She tells herself that it’s an experience.

Sheldon, when she emerges, looks like a padded creature from one of those _Star Trek_ episodes where Kirk ends up leaping around a set filled with polystyrene boulders shirtless before having sex with a Gorn. Or something. Under the earflaps of his hat, his expression is one of very slight confusion, mixed with a huge, gob smacked shovelful of _Oh, Penny...what on Newton are we doing._

And all she can do, the only reaction her brain can muster, is to cover her mouth with both hands, and laugh.

 

 

 

 _There’s not much to remember from that first night. Did she dream, did she fight off a headache, did she wake and feel the chill on her teeth? Maybe all three?_

 _What the hell would he have done with a measure of her heart, anyway?_

 

 

 

When she opens her eyes she can see steam. A tiny bubble of steam, curling thinly and disappearing as it rises into the air.

“What is that?”

“Lingonberries,” says a sleepy voice nearby. She can see the back of his head and nothing else. It must be his Vulcan sense of smell.

“It’s juice,” the voice continues heavily, when she fails to respond.

“Oh, right.” Penny shuffles in the warm cocoon of her sleeping bag, not at all wanting to pull out a hand and risk the cold. She opts for watching Sheldon instead. Much more entertaining.

Eventually he sits up, blinks exactly ten times in rapid succession, and reaches to pick up one of the mugs.

“Nice hairdo,” Penny says dryly.

Sheldon frowns. “My hat must have fallen off...”

“What is that, like hair follicle compass point north or something?”

He refuses to rise to the bait, holding out her mug until it becomes too tempting. With a sigh she hauls herself upright and takes a sip.

And now it’s Sheldon’s turn to watch her.

“What, you’re not drinking yours?” she asks.

“Not without knowing where those berries were sourced, no.”

Penny raises an eyebrow. “You mean that wasn’t covered in the exhaustive lecture we were given last night?” When he doesn’t reply she puts the mug down and nods at the watch on his wrist. It turns out that Sheldon wears a watch when sleeping on enormous ice cubes. Must be part of his survival plan. “Can that thing tell me what time it is, by any chance, or has it frozen like your hair.”

He gives her an extremely put-upon look. “This _watch_ was designed by Soviet cosmonauts. It could tell you the time if you were moon hopping on Jupiter.” At her sudden death-stare he relents, quickly. “It’s 7.43...”

“In the a.m.? Uh, no.” She puts the lingonberry stuff down and shoves her head onto her pillow.

“What are you doing?”

“Toasting myself stupid,” Penny murmurs, eyes closed and head buried, “in glorious Swedish goose down.”

There is a long pause, into which he finally says, “Would you not rather toast yourself stupid in the sauna? I hear they serve a breakfast buffet from eight o’clock in the restaurant and the ambient temperature there is a balmy sixty-five, if I may revert temporarily to the imperial—”

She’s up and gone before he can take another breath.

 

 

 

And yes, it does occur to her, the fact that she had just spent the night with someone who doesn’t exactly share his nights. Ever.

She wonders if he’s thought the same thing.

She also kind of wishes she knew nothing about _Star Wars_. Because the more she thinks about it the more Penny is convinced that she’s just one snark-fuelled argument in an ice tunnel away from turning into Han Solo.

Raised voices from the other side of the breakfast bar make her look over. And sigh, because it’s Sheldon, who is aiming a fork at the fruit salad and gazing icily at a nearby waiter.

Penny swallows the last of her toast, pushes her chair back, and strides across the room.

“Sheldon Lee Cooper,” she says, loudly and clearly. “Put the cutlery down and come with me. It’s time to kick some Imperial fleet ass.”

 

 

Science fiction allegories aside, this roughly translates to stuffing two daypacks full of sandwiches, chocolate, and a thermos full of something comfortingly hot, and walking out into the snow.

Penny takes the lead.

The cone-shapes of the night before are now fully formed, white-capped beasts, towering and silent. The crunch beneath her boots is loud and crisp and something for her to focus on, which is a good thing, because Sheldon hasn’t stopped talking since they emerged outside. Quite literally, not even to draw breath. But it’s quiet, and it’s not like he’s talking _to_ anyone—apart from himself—so she leaves him alone.

A bird calls out from high above her head. She bends her neck, looks and looks, but can’t see it. An answering call echoes from further away. _Crunch, crunch_ , she steps into dazzling fresh snow, and wonders what he would do if she were to break into a run, laugh over one shoulder until he has to follow for fear of being left alone, his one-man conversation done with and gone.

When Penny was eighteen, she, Maggie Lewis and Maggie’s little sister Flynn went skiing at Bridger Bowl, Montana. Maggie had a cousin who lived nearby and worked there during the season and had invited them for a week before the real crowds came. And the thing she remembers most vividly was how she was breaking into something wide and pristine; and even tipsy happy with drink and gossip that made sense to nobody but themselves, Penny would catch herself standing rigid still in the snow, everything behind her and nothing before, and not wanting to move. Because moving would break the picture.

Maybe she feels the same now.

“Penny?”

She doesn’t stop, or look back, but she turns her head a little so he knows she’s listening.

“You walk so fast...”

“Guess I must be in better shape than you. What with your jogging phase lasting all of, what was it, ten seconds?” She pretends to think. “That’s about how long it takes to fall down a flight of stairs, right?”

He huffs a little, and she waits for him to return to his own little world when he’s suddenly striding forward and by her side. Startled, her teasing smile disappears and she stares up at him. “That’s not what I meant at all,” Sheldon says, ducking to avoid a low-hanging branch, bumping her shoulder with his upper arm. “What I was going to say was that if you insist on barrelling forward in fourth gear like a snow plough, then you will only take in about one eighth of the scenery and points of relevant interest. As opposed to a quiet, studious, and methodological meander in which I, the scientist, shall act as enlightened tour guide to _you_ , Penny, the novice.”

As casually as she can, Penny bends down mid-stride and scoops up a handful of snow. “Okay. Then this novice has a question. How _fast_ can you meander with this down your neck?”

And before his flight instincts can kick into gear, she deposits the snow firmly between the collar of his jacket and the neck of his thermal undershirt, thumps him cheerfully on the back, and runs.

 

 

 

When he finds her, she’s downing too-hot coffee from a thermos lid, and doing a fine job of pretending not to notice how flushed his cheeks are, or how hard he’s breathing.

“You’re the one who started it,” she says, all innocence. She’s reminded of washers all tumbling together, clothes strung up on phone lines. Games threatening to spill over into something more. _Well played._

Sheldon collapses onto a tree stump, the nylon of his pants rustling, and rests his hands on his knees.

“Why?” he asks.

“Why put snow down your neck? I think the answer’s pretty obvious.”

“No...” His voice seems strained. So, that’s new. She swallows the coffee. “Why did you want to come here? And bring me?”

She opens her mouth, the speech given to Bernadette on her tongue, or a version of it anyway; one less reliant on run-on sentences, and containing more questions than actual answers.

“ _I’ve got to run_.” Penny channels her best Harrison Ford, but it sounds more like Steve Martin. “ _There’s a price on my head_.”

By now he’s drawn enough oxygen back into his lungs to concentrate and fully absorb her words. She might not have got the delivery right, but she’s damn sure been made to sit through that move enough times to quote it all to hell. As his face twitches through a series of shocked and fascinated reactions, she waits, patiently, and hands him a sandwich. In the end he actually has the grace to look impressed.

 

 

 

She orders vodka at the bar. Normally she’s pretty ambivalent to the stuff back home, but she might as well get into the spirit seeing as it’s practically the showcase feature here.

The girl who serves her has a buzzcut and line of stars tattooed onto her collarbone. “On holiday alone?” she asks politely, sliding a coaster along.

“Yes and no.”

“Yes and no?”

“I’m with Superman,” Penny says, nodding in the direction of one of the tables. The girl follows her eyes and half-smiles.

“Ah, okay. Well, enjoy.”

Chief among the reasons as to why she’d decided to drag Sheldon along had been the one where she knew without fail that she only has to mention alcohol, or going to a bar, or any variation where she might need to be around other people, and nine times out of ten he’d be guaranteed to make some sort of disparaging comment on her dedication to inebriating substances, and then do his magical disappearing act. Nine times out of ten.

And she would have counted on that happening again tonight, except that as they’d been standing in reception earlier on, getting the keys to their _new_ new room (this time of the non-frozen variety), he’d suddenly tugged at Penny’s sleeve and blurted, “Nils Reistad!”

“What?”

“Astrophysicist Dr. Nils Reistad just walked through that door and out another!”

“Walked? Actually walked? Through a door? How are we still here?”

“Penny. If that is sarcasm then it is pale and insipid and not worthy of the seven brain cells I shall have to sacrifice in forming a truly withering response—”

“Oh, take a freaking breath, Sheldon. No one likes a slobbering fanboy.”

“I am _not_ a slobbering fanboy.”

And so it continued for the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening. Now she drinks alone, watching as Sheldon, having captured this prize of a scientist and pinned him to a table, proceeds to go through everything he’s ever done, said, or thought, from the age of six years old to last Wednesday. Okay, so she can’t actually hear them so she doesn’t know this, so maybe it’s a perfectly regular conversation between two perfectly regular people, and in a minute she’ll wander over, and smile, and pretend to be astonished that this is a bar and none of them appear to be drinking and _won’t you introduce me to your friend, Sheldon?_

Salt-and-pepper hair, five-day growth of a beard. Doesn’t appear to have run helter skelter the second Sheldon opened his mouth, so he obviously has stamina. She wouldn’t mind an introduction. Penny leans back casually to get a better look. Wedding band. Oh, well.

It takes at least two unsubtle coughs to get Sheldon to turn around. He ruins her good mood by immediately asking for another Virgin Cubre Libre. Except Sheldon calls it something in Swedish.

She takes the glass he’s holding out with stiff fingers.

“Sheldon.” She laces more than a little junior rodeo into the two syllables of his name, beaming a smile so bright that it practically lights up the room. “Are you really going to leave me sitting there all alone?”

“Well...yes.” He looks confused. “Wasn’t that what you wanted when you told me to go build a snow cave and never come out again?”

The smile loses maybe fifty watts. “Only because you insisted on swapping beds after I’d unpacked every single thing from my case.” She turns sweetly to Sheldon’s companion and sticks out a hand. “ _Hej, jag heter_...um, Penny.”

“Nils Reistad. Hello.”

“Hi.” She grimaces. “Sorry, that was awful.”

“And technically incorrect,” says Sheldon, “seeing as Dr. Reistad is Norwegian...”

“Now you’re splitting hairs, Dr. Cooper. The syntax is very close.”

“And now _you’re_ showing off English colloquialisms to a degree that puts us all to shame.” Sheldon looks incredibly pleased and proud at the same time. She feels a little sorry for this guy who’s obviously unwittingly ticked all the boxes to be one of Sheldon’s idol-worship-crushes, a role usually filled by people who are either dead or so obscure they don’t even rate a Wikipedia entry. The two of them continue to go back and forth; Cheesecake Factory flashbacks run through her head where Sheldon and Leonard would give their order, start talking about physics, or Peppermint Patty (but mostly the physics _of_ Peppermint Patty), and after thirty seconds forget she was there.

Penny sighs, and very deliberately places the glass back into Sheldon’s hands.

“I’m not your waitress, mister,” she murmurs quietly. Her hair, loose on her shoulders, swings a little and brushes his face. His eyes widen and he jerks back quickly; to anyone else it would look like barely a reaction, if that—but she knows better, and lets him suffer a little more by lingering for a moment, shoulder touching his, an accidental, friendly bump. Just two, normal people. Penny steps away, smiles very sweetly and purposely in Reistad’s direction, and waves them both goodnight.

 

 

 

Later, when she’s half asleep and buried under layers and numb to the world, she hears him fussing with the keycard, turning the handle to a door that won’t unlock. There’s muttering and long pauses. Then a beep, a click, and footsteps padding in. Another click. The door shuts.

She wants to ask him, no tease him, about what he’s been doing all this time—what could be so important that he’d break his concrete schedule and slip rebelliously past his trapped-at-age-eleven bedtime. She wants to—oh. Her eyelids flutter shut again.

There’s a crash that sounds suspiciously like a kneecap meeting the sharp edge of a coffee table. It’s a strange form of drunkenness, is Sheldon’s, rigidly sober but blind to the dark.

 

 

 

The dog’s fur is thick and soft, the leads trailing off its harness quiver in the snow as the animal pants with friendly excitement. Its eyes are almost transparent. She bends down to give it a pat. “Hey there. You’re a gorgeous boy, aren’t you?”

“I needn’t remind you that these are working animals. A pack. A unit. It would not be wise to bond.” Sheldon’s standing well back; she can see the hard set of his mouth, a guaranteed sign that he’s afraid and won’t come closer.

“I know,” she says, standing up. “And don’t worry, this is a bonding free day, I promise. I’m pretty sure all he wants to do is run.”

Behind her glasses the world is bathed in ruby-pink, turning every color one shade over. She lifts them up and it’s almost painful how clear the sky is.

Four to a sled. Their guide waves Penny over and tags teams her with two girls in matching ski jackets. They’re speaking French to each other, very fast, with a whole lot of giggling, and barely notice her as they jump in the back. Sheldon’s still hovering some distance away, eyeing the dogs warily, and she has to call out his name.

He wanders over, deliberately slowly.

“Are you sure you really, absolutely have to do this, Penny?”

She answers by climbing in and gazing back with a small smile. One of the dogs barks, and then they’re all yapping in chorus, and with one last sigh his shoulders slump and he clambers in.

“I have two doctorates—” Sheldon begins.

“—and a Master’s degree,” Penny finishes, wriggling over. “I know, sweetie. I know.”

Watching him sit down is like watching an insect fold in on itself, with his knees bunched up together, and the toes of his boots poking out at odd angles over the edge of the sled. Never mind issues of personal space: they’re both wearing so many layers that it’s like being squashed up against a marshmallow.

He’s wearing sunglasses, too. They’re mirrored. When she turns her head to gage his reaction she can see her own reflection. And she wouldn’t normally think it, or admit to thinking it, how weirdly attractive it is, this high-tech mixed with meemaw’s knitted hat look that he’s got going on.

“Are you cold?” he asks, out of nowhere.

The question pulls her from her daydream like a taut rubber band. Good, because it was going somewhere it probably shouldn’t. “No,” she says, quickly, before she realizes what he’s asking. He couldn’t possibly care—it’s not in his programming. She eyes him suspiciously. “Sheldon, are you trying to collect data again?”

But she doesn’t get to hear his reply because at that moment the world jerks with a sudden, sharp surge of momentum, and they begin to move. The dogs strain against the weight, legs digging in. The landscape flashes past as the speed builds, and then it’s as if everything’s in double-time; the trees, hills, leads criss-crossing, flexing and pulling back; Sheldon says something and she can’t hear him; all she can do is grin. She has no idea where they’re going, no idea at all.

The sled swings and turns, sometimes gently, sometimes not. Her teeth rattle when they hit a bump, and this time she _really_ hears it when Sheldon yelps in her ear.

What doesn’t register, not for a while anyway, is how he makes to grab her hand, hesitates and tries again, and on the third try she takes hold of him instead. And maybe forgets to let go.

 

 

They run into Dr. Reistad again that day. Or at least, Sheldon does—Penny’s got her back to him for half a second as she tries to take a photo of some birds flying overhead, and when she turns back he’s disappearing down a walking track behind the Norwegian, talking a million miles an hour as if half a day hadn’t just passed between their last conversation and this one.

She’s in a good mood, though, so lets it pass. If she closes her eyes she can still feel the pull of the sled. Something building, she thinks. It’s nice.

 

 

 

“So. Tell me what you two have been talking about. Dazzle me with your science.”

“Is that vodka?”

“Yup.”

“It’s red.”

“Oh, don’t be so naive.” She turns an accusing finger at his face. “You know, I think you put it on sometimes, Sheldon, just for show. Just to make a—a _point_.”

He puts down the napkin he’s been folding and raises an eyebrow. Penny matches him with an exaggerated pout, downing her shot. When she opens her eyes there’s a star on the table. A star made of paper.

She picks it up, watching as it rolls into the center of her palm. “God,” she murmurs. “If you only applied just a tiny little bit of that brain to being, oh, I don’t know, less of a bitch sometimes...” she trails off, and looks at the glass. “Come on, join me in a round. It sucks to drink alone.”

Instead of parroting his usual _but I don’t drink_ routine, Sheldon reaches over and takes back the piece of origami. Sensing an opening, Penny says, hopefully, “Milk, tap water with five hundred year old ice, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Please?”

“You should avoid drinking water from the tap in a foreign country. It’s a choice of boiled or bottled, or risk any number of water borne microbes guaranteed to turn two weeks of fun into two weeks of misery.”

She looks at him sideways. Always a freak, impossible to read. Her head swims.

“You think we wouldn’t last two weeks?” she asks, quietly now.

They stare at one another. She’s not sure where that came from, or if she really wants to know the answer.

Instead of replying, Sheldon scrapes his stool back, a hard sound she can feel through her skin. He disappears and returns with two glasses.

“There. Your five hundred year old ice.”

She picks it up, unsure whether to believe him. The water chills the inside of her mouth, flushing out clean the nice alcoholic burn. Shame. “No kidding.”

“Why would I kid about centuries old ice?” he asks, adding, after a moment, “even if it is plainly a marketing gimmick.”

Penny smirks. “You mean they didn’t have Evian back in the Stone Age?”

Sheldon promptly throws his hands into the air. “Is that what high school taught you, Penny, really? That the sixteenth century was one of the great periods of human evolution? Does this timeline of yours also put the rise of the dinosaurs smack bang into the British rock invasion of 1964 to 1966?” He puts down his glass and winces. “That’s much too cold for consumption. Where’s the manager?”

“Wow. You’re actually drinking and talking at the same time.”

“Sarcasm will win you no friends.”

She levels an even gaze square into his eyes, and without looking, sticks her hand in the air and signals the barman. “ _I don’t know where you get your delusions, laser-brain_ ,” she says in a low voice, sliding off her stool.

“You can’t be both Han _and_ Leia,” he complains.

She stands there, looking down at the back of his head as he balances a coaster on its thin edge. She bites her lip and almost says it’s okay, he can go, or make more stars out of napkins, or don’t drink but tell her a story instead. Alternate history: what if Han’s ship hadn’t made it out. What if the great Han Solo was a woman, a ballsy, hard-nosed, seen-it-all woman who could fly into the dark with one eye blind.

When she returns from the bathroom there are two shots on the table. Clear, this time, not red. He watches her the whole way back.

 

 

 

 _Bernadette was supposed to be picking her up at LAX. But Penny’s cell rings when she’s standing in the line at Starbucks, something about an emergency at the lab, and Bernadette talking in a very fast voice about petrii dishes and a box of pop tarts and a door being left open by mistake, so she hauls her cases onto a bus and takes a seat in the back. It’s raining, and hard, the sort that doesn’t clean the air but instead sits in oily puddles, making tires skid and brake lights flicker on all the way to Pasadena. She digs out her iPod, gets halfway through_ La Vie Boheme A _when the track skips. Little red bar on the battery, nothing left._

 _There was a playlist she’d made, earlier, in the excitement after learning she’d won, songs about winter and the snow and cheery things mushed together from various Disney albums. But somehow, in between short nights in rooms of ice and long walks in white forests, she’d played none of it. Not even to annoy Sheldon, whose idea of a vacation themed soundtrack was a silent one; and not even to drown out his attempt to explain why. She hadn’t wanted to._

 _Funny, that._

 

 

 

He’s got the door half-open and a hand over the light switch when she drags him the rest of the way in and locks her lips onto his. There’s five, ten seconds without moving, moving or listening to the voice in her head that’s telling her _don’t do this, don’t make this mistake_. He’s still and stiff against the wall; when she opens her eyes she can see the adams apple bob cleanly in his throat.

And she says, hand to his chest, “I can be whoever I want.”

“Whomever.”

He manages to make four syllables out of three. He’s been doing that all night. The point where she realized what a turn-on it was, was about the same time that she discovered that five hundred year old ice fits together with certain other beverages like a chilled out dream.

“Please shut up,” she says, feeling her way back, pulling when he doesn’t join her. She kisses him again. And for a second he reacts, or responds, with something she can actually feel, before—

“Penny.”

“Just...” She drops her head to his neck, frustration tightening in her chest. “Please.”

“I have to tell you something. Nils Reistad—”

Penny breaks away. She crosses her arms. When he doesn’t finish she almost snaps at him. “ _What?_ ”

“He’s invited me. Up north, there’s a research trip leaving in a week.”

Her face is warm. She can hardly see him, the room’s so dark. It’s just a voice in her head. No. It’s just her arousal, punching great fucking holes in her chest.

Penny turns her back on him, and climbs into bed.

 

 

 

When she wakes she has a headache that feels like a jagged line reaching right from her eyes down to her toes. She rolls over to peek at the light between the curtains and stare blearily at her watch. Ten past seven. They have a late checkout, she was going to sleep in, but now that she’s apparently going home on her own...damn him. God damn him springing that on her.

His bed is made and his bags packed and sitting in the corner of the room. His outdoor gear is gone.

 

 

 

“Good morning, miss. You are leaving us?”

It’s the same clerk who checked them in. Polite, knowing smile still there. His hands fly across a white keyboard. Penny leans against the counter.

“Yeah.”

If he picks up on her half-dead enthusiasm he’s mostly cordial about it. “What time is your flight out of Kiruna?”

“Oh, this afternoon. Two thirty.”

“You are welcome to leave your bags with us until your taxi comes.” He holds out a pen and her passport. “Please sign here...”

“Thanks, that’d be great.” Penny scribbles something resembling her name and smiles. “Um, my friend...”

“Dr. Cooper was up at four this morning. In the guest lounge. With his laptop. I wasn’t here but I believe my colleague saw him.” When she turns to look he adds, quickly, “He went outside about an hour after that.”

“Big orange down jacket?” she asks.

A nod.

He’s looking at her in a not looking kind of way. She thinks, great, does everyone know? “Well, there are his bags,” Penny says tiredly. She waves a hand in the general direction of their things. “So he’s not... _gone_ gone. I guess.”

This is ridiculous. Four o’clock?

“But you enjoyed your stay, yes?”

The softly accented voice pulls her back and at least this is something she can be wholehearted about. “I did,” she says. “Absolutely. It’s beautiful here. Really, just amazing. And I have a random guy who isn’t Stellan Skarsgard to thank for everything, and I doubt I’ll ever see him again, or serve him anther iced tea.” She grins, working the charm. “Hey, we do an amazing iced tea, you know. At the Cheesecake Factory. That's where I work.”

There’s that smile again. He’d do wonders in a poker game.

“The Cheesecake Factory, you say? I don’t believe we have those in Sweden.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing out on.” She sighs, and with fresh determination zips up her jacket. “Now, which way did the lovely and not at all inconsiderate Dr. Cooper go?”

 

 

 

She sees him long before he sees her. It helps that he’s dressed pretty much like a traffic cone lit up like a Christmas tree. If this were paintball she mightn’t have such an advantage. She imagines him in white camouflage, like that bit in _Inception_ when it starts to turn into a Bond movie, all white vertical covered cliffs and armored snow ploughs, with that guy who was one of the Batman villains out looking for his father in like eight layers of dreams. And where Penny starts to lose track of the plot, actually, but never mind. This isn’t a movie. This is following a trail they’ve already walked, and run, and argued over.

Sheldon is sitting on a rock shaped like an enormous rabbit. Or a rabbit without ears. Or maybe just a rock. Penny clears snow away with her glove and perches beside him.

“Good morning, Princess,” she says.

He makes a sound in his throat. She nudges him with her shoulder.

“So, thanks for helping me with the gear, by the way. Never felt more like a pack mule in my life.”

“The timezone app on my phone wasn’t working,” he says, as if that explains everything. “I wanted to catch Dr. Gablehauser before he was pulled into an endless maelstrom of meetings.”

She knows, but she asks anyway. “What did you need Gablehauser for?”

“Leave approval. I don’t want to lose my rights to the Xerox machine. Or come back in five months and find that Koothrappali has installed a desk larger than the floor size of my office. I also needed Leonard to deal with the air freight company...and for Amy in turn to supervise this and make sure a beach umbrella doesn’t get sent in place of my technical manuals.”

“Five months.” She gazes intently at the side of his face. His cheeks are pale. “You’re really doing this, Sheldon?”

Finally he turns to look at her. “I thought I already told you? Was I unclear at all last night? If I was, I apologize. You may direct all blame to the Absolut corporation and its variously colored subsidiaries.”

It takes an effort to control her voice when she says, “No, last night you were perfectly clear.”

“Penny, this is my work—”

“No, this is no-one’s work.” She waves a hand at the landscape, angling her body so that he’s forced to meet her eyes. “Us, here? It’s not work.”

“I don’t understand why you’re upset.”

“God. I’m not upset, okay, Sheldon. I’m maybe embarrassed as all hell about something _else_ , but don’t you worry, I’ll get over that.” She breathes in carefully and some of the frustration dissolves. Some, not all. “I was just...surprised.”

He looks about ready to protest again, and she adds, quickly, “I mean, you won’t take public transport because you can’t, like, vet all the passengers. And I know you’ve done this before, but Sheldon, you went to the Arctic with the same three people that you eat bad cafeteria lunches with every day. Do you really know this Reistad guy? Does he know you? Will he...”

She trails off. He’s watching her now, and she thinks he could probably finish what she was about to say. Probably, maybe, but he won’t. He’s tougher than he looks. Stubborn son of a bitch, hard-boned Texas mentality wrapped in neuroses and a whole lot of fear.

“Why did you come out so early?” Penny asks.

“The aurora,” Sheldon says. “I wanted to see the borealis.”

She punches him softly on the arm. “Hey, mister, I did too. You should have woken me.”

“You were asleep.” He frowns. “In any case, the hour was wrong. I mistimed it.”

He sounds so hollow that she has to stop herself reaching over. “I’m sorry, honey.”

“I did see Jupiter.”

“Yeah? How’d it look?”

“Far away. When you get back, ask Raj to take you up on the roof and show you. There’s a moon called Europa that is particularly fascinating. It’s made of ice.”

“I’m starting to think that my own _bones_ are made of ice...”

“That is a physical impossibility, Penny.”

She shivers. She’d like to be warm again. Soon. Now. “I shouldn’t have kissed you,” she says instead.

Sheldon doesn’t seem to hear this. His eyes are focused somewhere else, past the treetops to the greying sky. She’s about to stand up and suggest he do the same, when he says, “Will you allow an amendment?”

Penny nods.

“I disagree. What you shouldn’t have done is quote Leia when you had already taken the role of Han. Effective and satisfying roleplaying requires consistency and dedication. They aren’t there to flip between like first-run TV pilots on your DVR.”

A bird breaks through the low branches, a flutter of white. She watches it settle and grip the wood.

“You know,” Penny says, “you have your moments. Not many, but you do have them.”

“You’re doing it again.” He pauses as she leans in, body stiff and as still as before. But she can sense his focus this time, an undeniable clarity. She kisses him, gently. His gloved hands fall to hers. His voice trails away. “Inconsistency...”

And she realizes then, hand to face to chilled and frozen skin, tasting something on his lips that isn’t bitter or wrong, just how it will feel to miss him.

 

 

 

Stockholm is a muddle. She’s apparently sharing her flight to Heathrow with about seventy thirteen-year-olds on a junior sports camp. Diving and short-course swimming. The noise is unbelievable.

She has to explain to several people that the _Cooper, S_ on her ticket isn’t flying back, and it’s really okay if they need to install someone who’s been waiting on standby in the seat next to her. She’s seen _The Amazing Race_. There’s always a stray team or two waiting for the last seats to the Congo or somewhere, and Los Angeles is sort of a jungle. Well, a concrete one. But no can do; she’ll have an empty seat to fall asleep in.

Empty space to think.

Penny shoulders her purse and stuffs the boarding pass into the back pocket of her jeans. A newsstand catches her eye, headlines in Swedish she can’t read.

This was a vacation, after all. She should probably send some postcards.

 

 

 

 _When she gets home there are questions upon questions, some she tries to answer, most she doesn’t. There are awkward hugs she’s happy to receive. Amy tells her a long and involved story about a camel that refused to walk the same way as all the other camels, eventually circling the desert until it met the group in the other direction, and proceeded to lead them all to an oasis. She assumes this is meant to be a metaphor, or a distraction, or just Amy’s way of saying don’t worry, everything will be okay; so as a thankyou Penny gives her a snow globe with a reindeer in it. It’s a nice moment, ruined only slightly when Amy points out that the mountain backdrop is actually a facsimile of somewhere in the Italian Alps, and therefore not very Swedish._

 _One night Howard sets up a photo session on the TV, while Bernadette and Raj attempt to make batches of popcorn without setting off the smoke detector._

 _“I think there was something wrong with my camera,” Penny says, when they get to the seventh unfocused shot that’s just white with maybe a smudge in the corner that might be a building or someone’s arm. She tries to grab the remote off Howard but he’s too fast, handing it to Amy who throws Penny a triumphant grin._

 _“Ooh, you captured Sheldon perfectly there,” says Bernadette, from the kitchen. “He looks just like a jolly snowman!”_

 _She remembers that moment. The two French girls. Dogs barking. Sheldon trying to extract himself and falling backwards off the end of the sled. She’d laughed and taken his photo before he could rise unsteadily on two legs and threaten her with a lawsuit over the taking of unsolicited material. Diva, she’d called him._

 _Penny leans against the couch, turning her face to hide a yawn. She opens her eyes to find Leonard looking at her._

 _“Five months?” he asks, softly._

 _“I don’t know,” she says in a low voice, reaching to take a handful of the warm, buttery popcorn. “Maybe. I still don’t really get why. It’s like he’s stepping so far out of his comfort zone that it doesn’t matter. But. I guess he’s done it before, right? You’ve lived with Sheldon for what, ten years now? Even that long, you can’t know everything. He can surprise any of us.” She glances away. “Anyway, he surprised me.”_

 _Leonard is silent for a moment. He considers this._

 _“Yeah. He does that sometimes.”_

 _Penny nods, and is about to say something more except right then an argument breaks out between Raj and Howard over the positioning of the TV cables, Leonard gets up to stop it, and the words, whatever they were, stay caught in her throat. She picks up a napkin to wipe her fingers, but pauses, looking at it. Even though she’s never been able to make anything other than those little paper cranes, she knows there’s one thing she can do, and that’s improvise. She folds once, and again, forming the hard edge of a shape. It’s Europa, cut out from the sky._


End file.
